When a plot that could sink the US economy is uncovered, CIA recruit Jack Ryan must travel to Moscow to confront the Russian businessman behind it. Starring Chris Pine, Kevin Costner and Kenneth Branagh.

(Pine is Los Angeles born and raised. His mum, Gwynne Gilford, was in the Masters of the Universe movie; his dad Robert's resume stretches from Lost in Space to Disney's latest animated hit, Frozen.)

Yet Pine, who found his way into acting at university, wasn't looking to follow in Ford's save-the-day footsteps. In fact, now that he's playing the titular hero in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit - the same Tom Clancy character Ford had such success with in the 1990s with Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger - Pine seems rather sad he's not going to be playing those mysterious/oddball/funny-looking characters a few rungs down on the credits list.

Indeed, after supporting roles in the likes of The Princess Diaries and Just My Luck, Pine's career trajectory went straight to leading man after he scored the role of Captain Kirk in J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek reboot.

The team looking to similarly reinvigorate the Jack Ryan franchise (the character has also been played by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October and Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears) signed Pine up that same year.

Harrison Ford in Patriot Games (1992), Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears (2002). Pictures: SuppliedSource: Supplied

In the years that followed, several versions of a script came and went, as did a director. Pine played Kirk a second time, in last year's Star Trek Into Darkness, before Ryan became a reality. Pine says he was always sure the film would happen - "it just took forever".

"It's a studio tentpole film, so there's a lot of cooks in that kitchen. It was a good learning experience to see how movie-making happens from inception to completion at this level."

It's also the type of experience that would make some actors run and hide.

"It can definitely make you think about doing that," Pine nods, deadpan.

When he finally stepped on set in late 2012, Pine was faced with his Ford moment: how to embody the everyman hero.

"It can be hard because it's not as flashy as other roles can be and in many ways you're the boring white guy," says Pine. "The challenge is to take yourself out of it enough to let the story do the talking, to let the other characters shine. Sometimes that can be hard."

Pine actually worked with Baldwin on the animated movie Rise of the Guardians, but he didn't particularly seek advice on how to approach Ryan.

"The only way to do it is to do it your own way. That's what people respond to. The moment you start trying to copy or trying to model yourself off another actor, you're dead in the water.

"I'm following in the footsteps of guys for whom I have a lot of respect, but, it being 2014, we can't help but make a different, 21st century type of film."

The first Jack Ryan story not to be based on a Clancy novel, Shadow Recruit is directed by (and co-stars) Kenneth Branagh. It takes us back to Ryan's beginnings: inspired by 9/11 to serve his country, he is then recruited by the CIA to go undercover on Wall Street.

Yes, it has action: "There was a lot of running," Pine laughs. "Running after Keira Knightley. Where did Keira go?"

There was also some serious motorbiking on the streets of New York: "I was going fast in and out of traffic - one of the great thrills of my life. Scary."

And there was a snap: "I broke a finger doing that fight scene with the large gentleman in the bathroom ... it was an intense one, but it ended up looking pretty cool."

Yet Pine's Jack Ryan is more of a thinker - he needs to be to figure out the complex financial trail that leads him to a terrorist plot in Russia. "I am definitely no brainiac, nor am I any mathematician, so I was acting up a storm," Pine laughs.

Financial whiz he may not be, but Pine is a thinker, too. He's taken an interest in how Shadow Recruit's Russia versus the US plot has lined up with current world affairs ("With what happened with Snowden, we've seen that politics are a lot greyer and less black and white than we would like") and reckons he would have liked the script to be even more intricate.

"I like complicated plots; I would have cared for something a bit more complicated than this, but we had bigger fish to fry so I can understand why they didn't do it."

Pine is also a little wary of that word most associated with Clancy's hero: patriot.

"I didn't really have a desire to make a film about a flag-waving American hero. I wanted to make a film about an intelligent guy who is compelled to serve because he feels within himself this need to protect what is right and to prevent what is wrong. That was way more compelling than any kind of classic from-the-box American hero.

"That's probably at odds with the genetics of the character and what Tom Clancy wanted ... but I felt in 2014 that it was the right thing to do. It may not have shown entirely on screen, but at least I went about my business portraying this man who didn't do anything for any particular ideology, for any piece of paper or what he was told by his superiors; he was following his own sense of what was right."

Pine is signed on for more Jack Ryan films but says the studio will be waiting on "how much cash" Shadow Recruit makes before calling him to duty once more.

If it does work, he'll be breathing rarefied double-franchise air; air breathed in only by Ford back in the day with Ryan and Indiana Jones and Robert Downey Jr more recently with Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes.

In between, he hopes to "parlay these big tentpoles into other things ... and I usually seem to be excited by things that are different from these action films".

Pine points to Hugh Jackman - who last year played a mutant superhero in The Wolverine and a father pushed to the edge in Prisoners - as an example that one can be a leading man and eat his character cake too.

"He is one of my idols," Pine says of the Aussie. "No one does it better than him in the fact that he's a full entertainer - he's a song and dance man, he's good at comedy, he can do drama ... he's the full ticket. I can only hope to have a career like he's had."

Pine's made a start on that Jackman-like diversity with his two most recent shoots - comedy on the Horrible Bosses sequel with Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston, and singing in the musical Into the Woods, with Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp.

The former, he says, has proven difficult. "I find you have to be extremely loose."

As for the singing, how does he rate himself on a scale of Frank Sinatra to an injured cat?

"I'm better than my best friend who can't carry a tune to save his life ... and I'm far away from Sinatra. But I'm certainly trying to get there."

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